China Joins the Second Largest Tier of Global CMOS Image Sensor Suppliers
According to a report by Yole, Sony's CMOS image sensor (CIS) revenue will account for nearly half of the global market in 2025. China surpasses South Korea to become the world's second largest CMOS image sensor supplier, with OmniVision, SmartSens, Galaxycore, and Changguang Chenxin being the core companies driving the growth of the domestic industry.
Automotive electronics remains a core strategic competitive arena for CMOS image sensor manufacturers: OmniVision leads in this field, while Sony continues to increase its market share in high-resolution advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) automotive cameras and surround-view cameras.
From 2026 onwards, the upward cycle of memory chips driven by the artificial intelligence industry will bring new supply chain risks to the CMOS image sensor industry chain.
Yole indicates that the competitive landscape of the CMOS image sensor industry will show a clear polarization in 2025: Sony, Chinese domestic manufacturers, and other overseas manufacturers will form three tiers, further intensifying market differentiation.
Sony's market share significantly increased in 2025, driven primarily by the high-end mobile imaging market, orders from Apple's supply chain, large optical size sensors, ultra-high resolution chips, and advanced stacked chip architecture.
Samsung remained the world's second-largest CMOS image sensor manufacturer, but its revenue essentially stagnated throughout the year. This was due to strong competition from Sony in the high-end smartphone market and competition from Chinese domestic manufacturers in the mid-to-low-end market.
OmniVision Technologies achieved double-digit revenue growth; SmartSens was the fastest-growing among the leading companies, with a product portfolio covering multiple sectors including mobile phones, security, automotive, and consumer electronics, continuously expanding its market share.
In contrast, On Semiconductor's performance declined due to intensified competition in the automotive market; SK Hynix continued to shrink its CMOS image sensor business, shifting its R&D and production resources entirely to its core memory business.
Yole analyst Anas Charak points out: "The rise of China's CMOS image sensor industry is driven by both market demand and the self-sufficiency of the supply chain. Domestic CIS manufacturers are simultaneously leveraging local wafer foundry capacity and overseas manufacturing channels, while deepening cooperation with local camera module companies to comprehensively optimize their competitiveness in cost control, product certification, and new product launch cycles."
The competitive landscape in various downstream application sectors is gradually becoming differentiated, with significant differences in the market structure across different sub-sectors:
Mobile Phone Market: Sony leads by a wide margin with a 57% market share, significantly ahead of Samsung; OmniVision, SmartSens, Galaxycore, and STMicroelectronics focus on specific imaging needs in mobile phones, filling differentiated market gaps.
Office Productivity Equipment: Sony maintains its leading position, but with the post-pandemic era seeing a return to normal demand in the computer, tablet, and webcam markets, industry growth is limited.
Consumer Photography Equipment: The market is highly concentrated in Sony and Canon; the smart IoT sector is dominated by OmniVision, Galaxycore, SmartSens, Samsung, and Himax Technologies.
A well-developed domestic supply chain, coupled with differentiated strategies from various manufacturers, highlights three core competitive elements: cost advantage, miniaturized chip solutions, and access to domestic OEM channels.
In the security and surveillance sector, the widespread adoption of multi-camera solutions is driving market expansion. The sector is highly fragmented, with SmartSens and OmniVision holding leading positions.
In the industrial vision sector, Sony maintains its dominant advantage; ON Semiconductor, Thada Electronics, Changguang Chenxin, and Hamamatsu Photonics firmly hold core positions in high-performance, long-lifespan industrial sensors.
Meanwhile, potential risks are gradually emerging: the artificial intelligence industry is driving massive demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and advanced DRAM, leading to tighter memory chip capacity and continuously rising prices. Memory manufacturers are prioritizing high-margin memory orders.
Wafer capacity allocation, logic/memory chip raw material costs, stacked chip architecture design, on-chip caching, and camera module R&D planning will all be indirectly impacted by the shortage of memory capacity, thus affecting the development of the CMOS image sensor industry.
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